Okay hockey fans, it’s that time of year again! The NHL Trade Deadline is upon us. Friday, March 3rd at 12:00 pm Eastern time, exactly, the teams will finish their fights to bolster their roster before the home stretch and the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
Like the famous quote about Wayne Gretzky, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” No that wasn’t about Wayne… Oh! “If Wayne Gretzky can get traded anyone can get traded.”
Trade deadlines in every league are always exciting, just look at the NBA where we saw both Kevan Durant and Kyrie Irving traded. The NHL is no different as 26 teams with 0$ in actual Cap space try and make moves while the other 6 teams suck up all the assets they can to take on other teams’ bad contracts.
Meanwhile, every team that needs space is using Long Term Injury Relief to get more space while also sending picks and prospects to other teams so they can retain 4% of a salary… Wait this doesn’t sound fun at all? It’s actually really stupid and confusing!
But it can be fun! If you just don’t worry about all the small minute details the NHL has forced teams to source out. There is so much information available to the casual fan nowadays it almost takes a bit of the gusto out of the NHL Trade Deadline.
Back In Ye’ Old NHL Trade Deadline
I’m not Don Taylor old (Sorry Don, I know you won’t read this anyways), but I do remember a time when the NHL Trade Deadline was different. You would wake up on the deadline day and go straight to your TV and check if any news from the East Coast had come down yet. After getting whisked off to school you would only hear what your teachers might mention if they were sports fans.
After school was done you would run home and hope to catch the last couple of trades trickle in and listen to hear if your favorite player might have been traded. I was never dumb enough to buy a jersey with a name on it when I was a kid, Because we were poor and they were thrift shop finds, but I did have some pretty upset rich friends who had to watch their Bure or Linden jersey rendered uncool.
The next day was almost even better as the newspaper would have a full list of everything that happened. The sports shows would run loops about all the news and we could either look ahead to the rest of the season or to the future.
Nowadays? I just spent 47 hours on Twitter in the past 3 days because the trades keep coming in fast and furious. It’s not just the trades it’s all the trade rumors! Everyone who writes a beat has a podcast or has ever heard the word “Sport” has information from someone’s dog who walked by (Insert player’s name here). Or you could miss everything because you went to the grocery store.
There are however a select group of NHL Insiders we can all trust to get our information from. No, I’m not talking about Mr. Booth (Ahhh now I miss Mr. Booth, he would have caused a shitstorm this Trade Deadline. I digress.). The real ones. The guys that are dialed in and have their ears to the phone and their fingers on the buttons.
Getting Into The Insider Game
I’ve been doing this sports thing for a while so I thought I would try my luck on becoming an NHL Trade Deadline Insider! Using my vast contacts I reached out to various people looking for, as they call it in the business, Two Scoops Of Raisins.
I wanted to start off small, so first I reached out to my Colleague over at a local sports company. “Josh, I’m at work, is this important? No, I don’t have any information on trades that are going to drop, Is this what you actually called me about?” Click*
That’s a bit rude but okay, I’ll move on. I spoke with a prominent producer of a Vancouver Radio Station and I didn’t get much better information from him, “I hear Wayne Gretzky is coming out of retirement.” That doesn’t make any sense I kind of feel like he read the first part of my article before I asked him the question.
It looked like I would have to dig a bit deeper to try to break a trade this NHL Trade Deadline. Next, I reached out to someone I’ve been in the media booth with who told me, “Chelsea is in shambles right now it doesn’t matter.” I realized I was talking to a soccer contact. Not helpful.
Don’t worry I still had lots of contacts to exhaust. I reached out to one of the foremost insiders in the business. Don’t want to brag and not name any names but he called me Pal a lot, Unfortunately, I was DMing so he could clearly see my name. I don’t want to take insider information from someone who doesn’t know my name so I’m not even going to share any of it.
I was starting to exhaust my list of names but was getting to the biggest of the wigs that I had. An NHL Executive. I got up the nerve to give him a call and introduced myself. The voice was unmistakable, someone hockey fans would know right away, To which he replied, “Who are you and how did you get this number? Don’t ever call me again!”
That didn’t go as planned. I guess I will need to up my game by the next trade deadline. For now, I’ll leave it up to the real insiders.
Don’t Get Worked Up About It, It’s Only A Sport
I hope you have gathered by now that this article is a bit of satire about the NHL Trade Deadline. While some of the comments I got were actual quotes, the people were prompted with what they were answering. Some of the quotes were not actual and you can figure that out as you like.
It’s just sports everyone! Have fun with it, Trades are amazing and though it sucks when your favorite player gets traded, that may lead you down a road to liking another team and only building the sport.
Sports Talk Line And The NHL Trade Deadline
The Trade Deadline is Friday, March 3rd at 12:00 pm Pacific time. We all know how slow NHL Central Registry works so trades filter in much later after the actual “Deadline”. Make sure to check Sports Talk Line as I’ll have all the trades from the last 2 minutes of the deadline to the last 2 weeks of the deadline.
Make sure to check out the entire revamped Sports Talk Line website for all your sports coverage. Follow me on all social media platforms for the latest news and info, and maybe even drop a trade in the next couple of days… Well if I get better sources.
